


Being a Six-Year-Old Is a Full Time Job

by PseudoFox



Series: After Pack Street [1]
Category: Pack Street - Fandom, Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Anthropomorphic, Awkwardness, Comedy, Drama, F/M, Family Drama, Furry, Humor, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Romance, Major Original Character(s), Minor Original Character(s), Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-05 16:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14622462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PseudoFox/pseuds/PseudoFox
Summary: Parents Betty and Remmy Cormo attend a major Pack Street event in a newly built mall complex. Like most things when raising a young cub, the experience feels one part frustrating, one part funny, one part informative, and all parts unpredictable. Yet they'll keep loving each other to pieces, even if every family event winds up going a certain way.





	1. Chapter 1

**[Chapter One]**

**Several years after the Bellwether incident, with the Pack Street residents going through quite a few interesting changes...**

Remmy Cormo’s ringing smartphone poised perilously at the edge of the stroller’s top basket, dangling over the hard ceramic tiles covering the Pack Street Community Center’s floors. Mammals of all kinds of ages, looks, and species trampled across the various little causeways and twisting paths— making their way past erupting fountains, surrounded by neatly-cut ferns, to store after store— as they took in PSCC’s ‘Parent’s Day’. Every little vibration of the unanswered call brought the smartphone closer to trampled-upon oblivion.

Fortunately, Betty and Remmy Cormo’s son, Johnny, had been sitting there in the front of the stroller and could save the day for his dad. Unfortunately, Johnny had only turned six years old earlier that week. The fact that he sounded more than twice that age— the cub learning to talk far earlier than most of his friends and family— only made things more complicated.

“Hello,” Johnny said with a cheerful voice, clutching the device in his fuzzy paws.

“ _Hello_! I was worried that there’d be nobody there,” said the mammal from someplace else.

“Yes!” Johnny held the device up against the chest beside his shirt’s huge Fur Fighter’s logo, pointing it up at his smiling face. “This is the Cormo family! Who’s the one I’m talking to?”

“Hey, I’m trying to reach my cousin, Remmy,” the caller said, “It’s Crossing here, from over in Tundratown. Who is this?”

“What? ‘Crossing’? Oh, that’s just like my mom told me,” Johnny remarked, thinking back for a moment, “there’s even this little mini-song to it.”

“Excuse me,” interjected the cousin, “but all I need is to—”

“It goes,” Johnny declared, raising his voice, “like: ‘to be so sure you don’t get _dead_ , look both ways and see that the light’s _red_ ’.”

“It’s _important_. When you get a hold of him, can you tell Remmy—”

“And when there’s a crossing guard, mom told me,” Johnny went on, “it’s: ‘when you cross, make eye _contact_ , and he’ll try to help because that’s a _fact_ ’.”

“When Remmy gets his phone back, please,” the cousin asked, “let him know that that Crossing called him about getting the steering looked at in his car.”

“There’s this part that mom said not to repeat,” Johnny continued, lowering his voice to a murmur with his paws cupped around the smartphone, “but I guess it’s different if you’re family? The secret ending goes: ‘Make sure the crossing guard’s not fat and lazy, sitting on the _grass_ , or else you might be run over while he’s out on his _ass_ ’.”

“That’s… uh… inappropriate, although informative,” Crossing remarked, “so, well, it sounds like something that that wolfess would tell you.”

“Pardon us,” moaned a pair of mammals in a tone of pseudo-politeness.

Johnny felt himself getting bumped around. The smartphone tumbled out of his paws onto his shorts. His eyes flew down— the cub seizing the device once again— and spotted the telltale red flashing that indicated the call had ended.

“Aw, come on!” Johnny called out.

The cub looked all over, his head twisting and turning. Whatever family had knocked his stroller appeared to have melted into the crowds. Johnny spent a moment glancing at the wolves in clown make-up entertaining toddlers as well as the small huts serving free freshly-popped popcorn and other small treats. The six-year-old only understood only a bit about money, but he could still tell that the PSCC’s real attraction during ‘Parents Day’ came from the so-called ‘Hot Deals’ he spotted signs for everywhere. 

A seemingly endless parade of mammals shuffled around beneath massive banners— with ornate-looking letters advertising everything from ‘5% Toddler Toys’ to ‘15% Off Tide’ to ‘25% Off Textbooks’ to ‘35% Off Tampons’. Johnny didn’t understand what that last word meant at all. It apparently had something to do with moms— and lots of them— by the looks of those bubbling around the CVS Furmacy.

“Oh, good God help me,” Remmy Cormo declared, marching out of a store with the finality that he’d never be back there again, “it’s bad enough what _the ATM_ put me through! If _Avo_ can be more stubborn than a machine, wow! She gets any more harassing, I’ll file for a restraining order!”

A family of four stoats smacked up behind the ram. One of the arguing tube mammals accidentally kicked one of the stroller’s wheels. They’d gotten engrossed in some little conflict to the point that the rest of the mall might as well not have existed. Remmy narrowed his eyes into little slits as he stared.

A wheel wedging around one of his hoofs made him finally notice that he’d screwed up parking the Cormo family stroller— nudging beside a pair of massive trash cans and the store’s huge doors in a way that seemed begging for trouble. Remmy sighed. He pushed it several feet over into a little side area, in between the stores, and scratched across his neck.

“It’s just… still, I can’t think of what the hell Avo thinks she’s doing… working in a place selling something as anodyne as ‘clothes’? BDSM outfits, maybe,” Remmy muttered, “but—”

“BDSM?” Johnny asked, scratching his head.

Remmy locked eyes with his son for a moment. The ram’s feelings of frustration only got a little bit tampered down— seeming something like pouring off a few water bottles onto the top of a burning building. Johnny, barely understanding a thing, simply smiled.

“I’m really sorry that I left you here for so long,” Remmy said, clutching the back of the stroller once again.

“It’s really fine, dad.”

“No, it’s not.” Remmy leaned down and carefully steered the stroller through the mall’s corridors. “It’s bad enough for us to have to walk so much in this corporate maze that we’ve got to put you back in this plastic monstrosity—” The ram brushed a hoof against the worn out bottom half of the stroller. “Because your six-year-old legs deserve _some_ rest.”

“I can walk right now, dad.” Johnny swung his legs out. “I’m good and relaxed or whatever.”

“It’s seriously wrong that they put the ATM in that weird little corner surrounded by shelves of pantyhose and stockings, _forcing_ everybody to stand in _single file_ and keeping them from bringing, like,” Remmy continued, trying to keep himself from ranting to his six-year-old. He reached down and put a hoof on Johnny’s shoulder. “Long story short, we’re finally able to meet your mom and get something _real_ to eat.”

“Thank the good God!” Johnny declared.

“Hey, uh,” Remmy muttered, trying to steer the stroller through a throng of focused-looking foxes, “please don’t repeat my quasi-blasphemy in that tone of voice. Keep it in the sound that makes it possible to pass off as a—” The ram ambled the stroller down a ramp and rapidly steered away from a patch of crying aardwolf toddlers. “Genuine prayer.”

“You mean the thing that we do in that place with the ugly walls, where we go every other Sunday?” Johnny asked. He stuck out his teeth in disapproval. “What does _that_ have to do with _here_?” 

“For what it’s worth, the average Zootopian’s idea ‘heaven’ is probably be a freshly built, racially-integrated mall— just with even more sales and no ATM fees.”

The cub didn’t even notice his father’s words. He found himself transfixed by the glorious smells wafting out of the food court. It only took a matter of seconds for Remmy to get gripped as well. They both watched intently as pair of teenage aardwolves with intertwined paws walked out of the Ricky Dinks– the couple carrying big containers with the company’s red and yellow logo stamped on them all crammed full of fried potato skins.

The aardwolves glanced over at the Cormo family’s direction. Their eyes slid down at Johnny’s spot in the stroller. The aardwolves had loudly debated some kind of Zootopian politics— something to do with the new administration raising taxes while hiking small business grants or another policy that zoomed far over Johnny’s head— before suddenly stopping.

“Is that one of those freaky ‘sholf’ cubs,” one of the teenagers muttered to her apparent boyfriend, “or whatever the hell the doctors call those mutants?

“I’ll bet he’s sterile… and cursed with the worst heart problems a mammal could have, too,” the other aardwolf murmured, “that’s why they get called ‘weeps’, babe.”

“I heard that.”

The aardwolves froze. They felt a huge, meaty paw upon both of their necks. Looking up, they witnessed Betty Cormo in all of her raw, sweaty glory standing tall. Her face contorted with rage. Johnny and Remmy, both of them in a fried food induced mini-haze, snapped to full attention as they watched the scene.

“I’m… sorry, ma’am,” the male aardwolf squeaked.

“How’d you even hear us? They didn’t?” the other teenager asked, unable to resist digging herself in deeper.

“I’m a mother. _I hear everything._ ”

Betty slowly but surely lowered her arms. She pressed the two aardwolves straight downward. They both crumbled upon the mall’s neat tiles, paws scurrying below them. Without another word, she snapped her arms onto her sides. The aardwolves both took in deep breaths.

“Now, wiggle away,” Betty declared, “like worms.”

The teenagers clutched their potato skins to their bodies like desperately-held treasures and twisted their bodies off in different directions. After traveling for several feet, they both popped up onto their arms and legs and drew the strength to speed down separate corridors. Meanwhile, the rest of the Cormo family gazed at her with wide-open eyes.

A few mammals, including a pair of horrified-looking elderly deer, had also witnessed the scene. They made faces of either confusion or disapproval, but none of them did anything other than hesitate before walking away. Betty’s expression of sheer confidence belied her total victory.

“So, Remmy,” the wolf said, stepping up to the stroller’s side.

“Yes?” Without really thinking, the ram had put a hoof on his wife’s back.

“Mom!” Johnny called out, reaching for attention.

Betty tugged the cub half-way out of his spot in the stroller, brushing their paws closely together. The two of them made a soft growling noise. Remmy happily watched, feeling his heart warm for the first time that entire day.

“Yeah, mom?” Johnny asked, seeing another expression flash across Betty’s features.

“I’m starving!” She slapped a paw against her belly, tugging a bit of her skull-covered Five Claw Death Punch shirt. “And those Goddamn deals on everything fried— from twisted soy steaks to potato skins to little clumps of cheese with spicy sauce— have been calling my name for hours now!”

“Finally found a place with an ATM that works with _my_ card,” Remmy remarked, steering the stroller, “so we can finally buy something that’s not relying on _your_ card, what with all of this banking B.S.”

“Oh, hell yes,” Betty replied, "and I've got good news as well."

"Mom?" Johnny asked, feeling curious.

"It's that whole 'per unit cost' thing! It means that you don't just have a steal when things are really on sale, but when you buy things both in bulk _and_ offered as a deal: you're making a _killing_!"

"Oh, wow," Remmy remarked. He had a lump in his throat. "That's... and... well..."

"Finally, we've got the kind of stockpile of household things that wolf parents _need_ to have!"

Remmy finally spotted what his wife had done to the humongous PSCC cart she'd picked up an hour earlier. Looking like a long, flat box of metal cut in half height-wise, the mall offered it up for prolific customers planning on hopping from store to store all day, something advertised as a must during Christmas, Easter, the Fourth of July, and other holidays including the much-hyped 'Parent's Day'. And Betty had crammed it full of bags from different stores.

"Oh, mom, I count," Johnny started to say, wiggling his right arm around as he added things up, "there's two... four... six... four... wait, let me begin again." He pursed his mouth as he tried to count more quietly.

"Take your time," Betty said, lovingly brushing her son's head with both paws.

"There's eighteen rolls of double-stuffed toilet paper in here, just with this one box," the cub declared, grinning as his math had finally added up. He looked up at his overwhelmed-looking father. "What do you think, dad?"

"To be honest, well," Remmy began, sucking in a little breath, "I'm glad that we're past the diaper phase."

"Oh, like you ever helped with that," Betty remarked, laughing as she shoved an arm onto her husband's side.

Remmy chuckled back, but the force of the thrust hurt more than he could let on. He cleared his throat. "Seriously, though, where are we going to store all this?"

"The _toolshed_ , you silly fluffball!" Betty declared. She laughed again. "Enough talking, and lets eat! Besides, with that shed... why not put our own things in there for once?"

"It's just, uh, a lot." Remmy shut his mouth, though, and didn't go on. He followed his wife and son to the end of the line before them, throngs of families standing between the Cormos and the Ricky Dinks' huge counters. Still, though, the various mammals behind the loudly buzzing grill set-ups worked fast.

"What else is the stupid shed going to be used for if not to get clogged with this-that-and-the-other-thing all of your Goddamn cousins want you to keep in there."

"Cousins," Johnny repeated. He tried to think back to something important, but he couldn't quite get his memory to work when the delicious aromas of fried foods bathed his senses.

"Johnny?" Remmy asked, leaning down to face his son.

"A shed for tools? It's, huh, a word that means a lot of things, right? That's what Mrs. Russet and the other foxes at school keep telling me: words can have different meanings. Toilet paper kind of counts as a tool."

"I... huh," Remmy muttered, not being sure how to respond.

"It does a special service on you, keeping you clean the way you'd keep a garden or sidewalk or whatever else clean. Like," the cub went on, gesturing with his paws in the air, "you even bend the toilet paper into a little shape in the bathroom, first, and it's sort of like working as a shovel. While your ass—"

"How about we _not_? We avoid talking about this _right_ before we're about to eat? Okay?" Remmy nervously asked, raising his voice.

Betty laughed the loudest, heartiest laugh that Remmy had heard in the longest time. It honestly made the ram think back. He remembered the exact same sound when she'd first gotten the news that interspecies fun with her quasi-boyfriend could've possibly gotten her pregnant.

"It's 'Parent's Day', so it's five dollars off every order over twenty-five dollars, not counting tax," said a tall mongoose in a weak monotone, his silly-looking hat sitting above an acne-covered forehead and a forced smile.

"I'll have... I think... a," Remmy started to say, hesitating.

" _We'll_ have," Betty authoritatively declared, stepping in front of her husband, "three large orders of the golden-fried twisty soy steaks, three large orders of the potato skins— the regular kind and _not_ the nacho cheese kind, and three king-sized cans of Wilde Wonder to drink."

"Okay." The tube mammal typed away at his little computer station.

"We'll take three medium-sized cinnamon buns as well. Make them the kind with the icing poured over instead of just left on the side."

"Okay."

"You don't need to count it. I'm absolutely certain that all that's over twenty-five dollars," Betty finished.

"Does her majesty want that for here or to go," the mongoose muttered, finishing with his typing.

"She's fine— actually, we'll all take everything right here, in the food court," Remmy interjected, not wanting to see another display of maternal strength, "thanks."

Like a force of nature, Betty could go on and on. Yet the ram he didn't want to start a fight with somebody waiting in line behind them that he'd individually have to deal with later. Remmy felt confident as well that he'd be ready to go home after he and his family had finished eating.

The wolfess either emphasized with Remmy's position, thought that the put-upon mongoose wasn't worth the effort, or both. She held out a paw. Remmy slipped a pair of twenty dollar bills into it. His wife duly gave them over to the cashier.

"Have a happy 'Parent's Day'," concluded the cashier, keeping to his same monotone.

"They're really pushing this whole 'Parent's Day' event," Johnny interjected, "aren't they? Like a new holiday or something?"

"Bah, it goes back years before, like before you were even before," Remmy remarked, idly scratching his chest, "every mall or commercial center or amusement park or whatever the hell else wants to find the next Christmas— the next blockbuster."

Johnny, barely understanding, simply nodded back. He ambled himself completely out of the stroller before taking another seat in the corner of a booth. The napkin dispenser beside him had a pair of brightly-colored balloons tied to it, both of them bobbing around in the mall's powerful air condition. Sure enough, both of them read 'Parent's Day' in gigantic letters.

"It won't be long," Betty commented. She motioned for Remmy to sit across from their son. The ram duly slipped himself onto the red, velvet-like cushion. "I'll wait here for the trays."

"So," the ram began, locking eyes with Johnny yet again, "it looks like whomever sat here before us wanted a thousand ketchups but only had to use a few hundred." He brushed a hoof against the corner of the table. "At least, well, they left us plenty of napkins and even a few straws."

Remmy let his mind wander for a moment. That was a mistake. He snapped back to reality the few seconds later to discover his son had stuck four straws together into two mega-straws before promptly shoving the edges of them up his nose.

"Hey, dad, look!"

"Johnny, I'm literally staring at you. Sitting exactly across from you."

"Look closer!"

"Yes!" Remmy exclaimed. He rubbed his arms up against his woolly chin. "I'm looking!"

"I'm an ant, dad!"

"That's great, now put that away before mom sees, okay?" Remmy pleaded. He watched as Johnny picked the pieces apart and began to place the straws back at their original positions on the table. "No! We're not using those straws to drink out of— not _now_!"

"Sorry, dad," Johnny murmured, cuddling his body against the side of the booth.

"If I could just get my phone from wherever the hell it'd buried itself," Remmy remarked, "I... I... damn it."

He wiggled his hoof around in the middle of the Cormo family stroller. He brushed against spare batteries, little packets of bandages, tubes of anti-bug-bite creams, and other little bits of items that parents seemed to pick up just by breathing. The ram sighed.

"Smartphone, hey," Johnny began, forcing his mind to remember something that he needed to say, "I... dad, wait..."

"And not a moment too soon!" Betty called out. She slapped down a massive tray coated with fried goodies in front of her son. Another followed in a split-second, slid right in front of her husband. "But, hell, I _just_ say that, and now I've got to use the bathroom again."

"See you a moment, mom," Johnny interjected, clutching a whole paw's worth of potato skins.

"No worries," Remmy murmured out of mouth already full of the fried steak pieces.

Betty quickly disappeared into the throngs of families moving around the food court. Remmy turned to his drink. He slid in a fresh, unmolested straw and guzzled down something like a third of it. His brain wafted up like a ship set vertical sail on a heavenly sea of blissful deliciousness.

And then he heard the small explosions.

" _What_ in the name of everything holy!" Remmy called out.

He shoved his tray over to the edge of the booth. He looked out at where his son sat. The ram's eyes grew wide as saucepans when he realized that the six-year-old had assembled the spare ketchup packets in a big set of semi-circles around his tray of food. Gooey redness dripped along the table's corners as the crushed remains of several packets crumpled further. The cub held a small hammer in his right paw.

"Dad, wait a minute."

"Can you possibly tell me how the hell _this_ scene makes _sense_?" Remmy asked, a mixture of desperation with genuine curiosity flowing through his loud voice.

"After Colonel Mustard killed all of the mammals in that 'Clue' game, he's at it again! Leading his ketchup troops to assassinate my potatoes!" Johnny flipped his paws around and pointed at the various bottles and packets on the table. "You can see that the only way to defend them is to use the—"

"Johnny, where you even get a hammer? Did you produce it out of thin air?"

The cub froze, looking deep in thought, as Remmy sized the tool right out from the six-year-old's loose grip. They booth took in a deep breath. Johnny anxiously stared down at the rest of his food.

"I... I really don't know, dad."

"It's," Remmy began, but he soon realized that he had no idea how to finish the sentence. He took the hammer and delicately placed it at the bottom of one of the stroller's buckets filled with items. "It's, well, not okay. And I don't understand. But I'm not mad. Does that make sense?"

"Not really," Johnny replied, the cub not even thinking.

Remmy knew that his son was right about that. He racked his brain for a moment, one of his hooves still hunting around the stroller for his misplaced smartphone, and sucked in a happy breath. "Oh, I get it. You probably snatched that out of the hardware store bag that Mom had put on that big cart." The ram looked around the Cormo family's booth in the dining area. "The cart that... she apparently brought with her to the bathroom, maybe? Or maybe not?"

The sight of the enormous cart getting shoved around off in the distance caused Remmy to feel a tinge of panic. He reached over for his drink and twisted off the lid. He immediately took out a bunch of napkins and began folding them over bits and pieces of crushed ice.

"Quick! Help me use these little pseudo-wipes and get this ketchup-covered war zone cleaned up!"

Thankfully, it only took a few seconds to bring the table to something resembling neatness, with the pile of trash shoved into an old, empty paper bag that'd wound up from the bookstore into their stroller. Both Johnny and Remmy breathed sighs of relief. They then noticed that the air that they'd sucked into their lungs smelled irritatingly ketchup-y.

"Well," the ram began, motioning his son to sit directly next to them, "there's a good chance that your mom won't notice."

"You think so?" The cub looked hopeful enough, his huge eyes gazing up at his father's woolly head.

"She's got all of her food that she's been waiting for right here," the ram went on, "and I would think—"

" _Damn_! Why does everything smell like it got fried in ketchup?" Betty asked, popping up at the side of the booth.

Neither father nor son said a thing in response. Yet Betty, for her part, just shrugged before clutching the corner of her tray's biggest container, the red and yellow cardboard crammed full of flaky and buttery potato skins. She hurled it up to her mouth and guzzled it all down. She looked something like a fraternity-ready teenager with his first tall-boy.

"Oh, dad, I see your phone!" Johnny exclaimed, glancing at the stroller at preciously the right angle.

Remmy let out a bleat of sheer relief. He flung his body down the side of the booth and clutched the precious device. He clicked through a few pages before rubbing his son's shoulders.

"Huh, a restricted number called... I guess we'll see what that's about later."

**About fifteen minutes later...**

Piled into the family minivan, a vehicle that seemed to drip out middle-class desperation mile by mile in Remmy's eyes, the Cormo family all sucked down the last bits of their drinks. Even after every last one of them had gotten a twenty-five cent refill, it hadn't seemed like enough. Still, Remmy thought, they could all carry gallons of carbonated goodness over their heads as they walked about without that being enough.

"Okay, time to start it up," Remmy declared. He'd never purchased a former 'rental' before, and he felt tense about things even after about a week of driving around without problems. "Time to shift gears. Time to look out."

"What did we say about 'announcing every act like we're a parental Harry Catty'?" Betty asked, leaning up against Remmy's shoulder with a callous look on her face.

"To... not..."

"Right."

" _Right_ ," Remmy repeated. He sucked in a deep breath. "After all, all I need to do is tweak the steering wheel, and we're good to—"

A loud crunching noise sounded off. Everyone froze. An awkward half a minute of total silence followed. Remmy finally let his vision slide to the right, and he watched as the broken-off side mirror shivered from side to side against the gigantic SUV beside them. Green and red paint mingled together with black wiring like something out of Jack Skellington's best Christmas nightmare.

Johnny popped his head up behind his father's shoulders. Remmy felt the rubbing against his wool, but he still said nothing. He heard his son make a burbling kind of noise.

"I can't... exactly remember... but like," the cub murmured, pursing his lips together, "this guy called 'Crossing' called. This reminds me. He warned about something bad... I think? Something that reminds me of this?"

"Johnny," Betty started to say, the wolfess feeling uncertain for the first time in a long time, "what exactly—"

"Oh, it was a warning to do with this car," the six-year-old went on. His face lit up, the cub feeling proud of having remembered. "That we should beware of this other guy. Take a good look at this other guy coming around our car. A mammal that's a, uh, a _steer_! A steer named ' _Ing_ '!"

"A steer named 'Ing'?" repeated both parents.

"Yeah," Johnny replied, "I'm glad that we've not seen him anywhere." His eyebrows shot up as he noticed the scene outside the driver's side window. "Hey, dad, what's with that wire-covered mirror thing? Is it supposed to be all wiggly like that?"

"You know," Remmy dryly responded, "sometimes I wonder if you're going to be six years old your whole life."

**[End of Chapter One]**


	2. Chapter 2

**[Chapter Two]**

**Around half an hour later, with everybody back in the mall...**

"Dad, look, they've even got a bunch of pets here!" Johnny called out, the cub speeding to a shelf-covered wall. His Icee flopped right out of his paws while his mouth dropped wide open. It felt like peeking into a nature preserve. "Wow, look at the variety!"

"That's the new 'WoolMart Marketplace' for you," Remmy remarked, stepping over to his son's side, "I thank the Lamb of God, in all his goodness, those greeter mammals _mean it_ when they say that they've got 'almost everything'." His emotionless monotone showed quite well how much having to fix his minivan had killed his already weak sense of joy about the whole day. "That company is the one most behind the whole 'Parent's Day' event, I guess."

The ram leaned against a long plastic bench and scratched his chest for the umpteenth time. The Cormo family's ability to take their time exploring the massive store somewhat tamped down the raw irritation of waiting as the auto specialists analyzed their busted mirror. At least, Remmy thought, he hadn't run into any more of his Pack Street neighbors since.

"Dad, watch!" Johnny yelled. He tapped a pair of growing claws onto a particularly wide glass box. "The millipedes, hey, they keep poking themselves into this corner and burying straight down! It's like they're trying to escape into the fishtank by the floor! But I don't think they even know how to swim, do they?"

"I... I _think_ that they don't. I'd guess that they'd only be able to jiggle all of those legs, maybe?" Remmy racked his brain for what he remembered of comparative biology back in early college.

"They've got a shape that looks... uh... floating-y," the six-year-old remarked, tracing a claw along the a thin grey figure as it crawled.

"To be honest, I need to Zoogle it," Remmy confessed. He let out a soft bleat. His eyes scanned column after column of large containers in which various creatures swam, scurried, and wiggled about. "Which I'd do _if_ my smartphone wasn't close to dead. We should probably head over to the BugBurga to meet your mom, then."

"Wow, they've even got this gigantic tarantulas!" Johnny's entire body lit up with sheer joy.

"The food place by those badger greeters... the tall guy said," Remmy began to mutter to himself, checking the time on his phone as he thought back to several minutes ago, "these deluxe WoolMarts offer everything: 'from airline passes to ale bottles to animation erotica to auto parts'. Right?" He stared down at a collection of goldfish, seeing how none of them understood a word of his. "Not that we've run into anything amiss wandering around, _but_ one of those things is _not_ like the other things."

"They even jump at you when your head gets too close, wow!" Johnny yelled. He tugged his father's side, the ram having gotten lost in thought while eyeing the fish. "Come on, dad! You're not looking!"

"I'll look!" Remmy hollered back, swinging his body to the side. He accidentally mushed his face and both hooves against one of the containers. "There! I'm looking, and I'm— oh, _holy crap_!"

An enormous tarantula seemingly tried to give Remmy a French kiss. The ram hurled himself backward and flopped onto his woolly behind. Sweat beaded all across his face. His six-year-old gazed at the entire scene— Johnny giggled profusely while still trying to keep his focus on the wonderful array of pets.

"Like I said," Remmy murmured, standing back up, "I've been paying attention."

"Yep."

"At your age, Johnny," the ram began, taking one of the six-year-old's paws, "a pet is a _serious responsibility_." He continued even after the cub let out a frustrated sigh. "And it would naturally wind up being a burden for the whole family to take care of, especially with the day-by-day routines—"

"Dad, we could always get a... not-scary looking spider," Johnny said.

"It's not how it, uh, looks," the ram lied, taking in a deep breath before he went on, "it's more about the hassle when a family gets one— the first day and all."

"But... up there, come on!"

Both father and son duly gazed straight up. They witnessed a set of banners stating that the special 'Parent's Day' event meant that the wide array of pets had gotten significantly discounted. Details of the new prices for each and every creature featured on stickers placed onto the container's front panels.

"Well, hold on," Remmy began, feeling a wash of guilt coming over him. Fathers shouldn't let themselves fall into the trap of dismissing any big changes around the house, the ram thought, and pet ownership appeared to teach a lot of young mammals about responsibility. "Let me just take a look here."

"They're all on sale, right?"

"Let me take a gander," Remmy said, halfway climbing on the plastic bench to make out the sets of fine print on the top row containers, "right now."

"Dad?"

" _Two hundred dollars_ , really! Are you kidding me with this!" Remmy shrieked.

"Dad, uh," Johnny started to say, walking to a position underneath his father's perch, "what... so..."

"Two hundred!" The ram's face seemed to shift from color to color.

"Is that... a lot?"

"Can I be brutally honest?" Remmy asked. He shut his eyes as he pressed a hoof to his face, not even waiting for a response. "That total is more than what your mother and I paid the hospital when we had you."

" _Oh..._ I... oh," Johnny murmured. He sat down flat upon the WoolMart's tile floor.

"Yeah, but," interjected a mammal from one of the nearby aisles, "like they say..."

Remmy slicked his body off of the plastic bench and glared straight out in front of him. His old neighbor Avo— wearing a shimmering red dress with black high heels for some reason— walked behind a massive display of gift cards into the store's pet area. Her naughty facial expression spoke volumes.

" _Don't,_ you," Remmy mouthed as he gritted his teeth, "don't finish that sent—"

" _You get what you pay for!"_

Avo's delicate pose with her arms rubbing against her hips, the predator's mouth contorted into a gigantic smile, made the moment a dozen times worse. She locked eyes with Remmy. The ram let out a pair of bleats before standing up straight.

"Dad, what," Johnny began, his head bobbing in sheer cluelessness between the two adult mammals, "I mean... what does that even..."

"Relax, Johnny, I'll handle this," Remmy declared, shooting out an arm and bringing his son to his side, "and I... can... deal with this." His confidence had already started fading. Avo merely stared back. "So, tell me something."

"Tell you what?" Avo asked, betraying a bit of genuine curiosity in her usual wall of snarky assertiveness.

"Tell us," Remmy began, "that... you..."

He racked his brain trying to think of what his wife would say. The magical moment to stand up on his own, for his son, to an old neighbor had finally come. He'd rehearsed different scenarios in his mind for years, the thoughts simmering deep inside even while Johnny was the infant stage. Sweat had already poured down Remmy's face as he did his best.

"What?" Avo taunted. She made a glamorous little side where she stood, with her legs rubbing together inside of her elegant outfit.

"Tell us what's with that fake celebrity get-up, huh?" Remmy asked, stabbing a hoof into the air. He narrowed his eyes. "Something special, huh? Something worth wearing those ungodly high-heels for?" He idly kicked in Avo's direction. "Tell you what: I'll bet those ugly things would work perfectly shoved right up into your backside there— your perfect size for a long-term suppository."

"I... that's..." Avo stammered. Her twitching mouth made it clear she'd gotten the surprise of her life.

"Oh, and I'll bet taking that little suppository in and out would be just to-die-for as a special production— a mini-episode for your cam-shows, huh? Keep bending over, and no need to worry about them seeing your face, huh?" Remmy kept stabbing a hoof into the air.

"You... _you_..." Avo murmured, searing bursts of raw anger starting to show out of her prior confusion.

"Don't harass me or my son again," Remmy declared, his tone of voice as dark as a trailer announcer for an upcoming horror film, "goodbye." He seized his son's shoulder and tugged the six-year-old away.

"Now, wait just," Avo called out, stamping her heels against the tile, "wait and—"

" _Goodbye_!" Remmy yelled. He pulled his son into a zig-zag like pair of aisles. He marched a bunch of additional steps ahead as he waited for some kind of a comeback to get screamed out behind him. Yet nothing came.

Father and son glanced about them for a bit. The walls displayed all kinds of reading material for young mammals. From kindergarten-certified stories of life before Zootopia's founding to Gazelle-based coloring books to cross-section works detailing exactly what how the spaceships of 'The Furce Awakens' looked like inside, it seemed like Johnny's idea of heaven.

Remmy breathed out a huge sign of relief. He watched contently as his son combed through a set of glossy 'science-for-cubs' magazines. Johnny then turned to face his father.

"I'm really not sure what just happened, dad," the six-year-old began.

"Neither am I, really," Remmy admitted.

"But thanks, whatever it was, dad."

"No problem."

"I, uh," Johnny added, nervously scratching his neck, "I guess that... when mom meets us at the in-store BugBurga, I shouldn't ask either of you what a 'camshow' is."

"Nope." Remmy let himself smile.

"Or a 'suppository'."

"Well..." Remmy's smile collapsed. "If the Medicaid doctors are right, then your mom and I might need to start worrying about suppository-based digestive easements sooner than we'd thought. Maybe around when you're in East Zootopia High School... damn it."

"Dad," Johnny started to say, sticking his head out from a massive coloring book, "I understood less than half of what those words meant."

"Good."

Remmy gave his son a big hug. Johnny let out a groan of embarrassment, spotting a pair of tiger cubs watching the scene from the edge of the aisle. Remmy merely squeezed harder. The cub covered his face with his massive book.

"Funny," Remmy muttered to himself, standing up straight, "but I don't think life will be that much different when you're twice your age."

"When... twelve years?" Johnny asked.

His big, bushy eyebrows raised up high. Remmy watched the look of curiosity mixed in with confusion flashing over his son's face. Meanwhile, a bunch more mammals had stepped into the book-covered aisle and filtered all around around them. While the other families chatted among themselves, the ram glanced down into his son's eyes.

"Oh, is that when I'll begin to drive cars and stuff?" Johnny shot out his arms and pretended to steer. He let out a loud, burbling noise as he ran over some imaginary being that Remmy didn't even want to know about.

"Nope."

"Starting football?" the cub asked. He caught an imaginary pass and braced his head down for an upcoming tackle.

"Nah, and you're mom's too worried about the concussions to let you do that like... ever," Remmy responded, snorting.

"Wait, ugh, is that when I'm supposed to get a... girlfriend?" He stuck out a tongue as he shot his eyes to the floor.

The ram held back a laugh. He let out a torrent of little chuckles instead, which looked and sounded even worse. The cub promptly flopped his body onto the floor.

"No tantrums, please," Remmy said, picking up one his son's paws and dragging him several inches along the tile. He sensed a large group of mammals staring at them both, the families glancing above the light-up Gazelle knickknacks held up to their faces. "Seriously, Johnny, come on!"

"Ugh, having to get a bunch of _kisses_ and _snuggles_ ," Johnny moaned.

Remmy slid his smartphone out of his pocket. Betty had sent a little message less than a minute before, stating that she'd ordered a round of drinks at the BugBurga. The ram smiled while making a little sigh of contentment.

"Bad enough when you and mom are all: 'snuggly-wuggly, snug-as-a-buggly'!" Johnny repeated the loud slurping sounds while making a fake embrace, perfectly mimicking how Betty and Remmy spent nearly all their nights together. "But for _me_ to get—"

"It's time to meet your mom at the food place... again. Relax, okay?" Remmy turned himself around and pressed both arms against his son's sides, preparing to hoist Johnny around the chest like a big sack of potatoes if necessary. "No more worrying about _future_ stuff? Not when we've got plenty of things happening right now?"

"Dad," Johnny began, though he duly stood back up and followed his father's steps out of the aisle.

"Come on."

" _Dad_ ," Johnny pleaded, "tell me the truth. What will I... supposed to like—"

"For goodness' sake, you," Remmy remarked, leading his son into a mostly-deserted hallway right into the middle of the mall, "all that I'll really expect from a twelve-year-old is that he avoids burning anything down or breaking his neck—"

"Check."

"And that he makes some good, real friends," the ram concluded, "like—"

He found himself face to face with a pair of swinging doors. Remmy tugged his son out of the way. The ram, though, got duly bonked on the shoulder and half-crumpled against the hallway's plain red and white striped walls. Johnny took in a little breath.

"I told you," barked a familiar-sounding voice, "these hallways are the secret to actually getting _anywhere_ in this place, especially on 'Parent's Eve' or whatever the hell kind of holidays the mall makes up."

Remmy glanced straight upwards and saw Al, the massive wolf wearing a plain teal t-shirt with matching greenish pants and a look of confidence, marching along with somebody right behind the predator. The ram held up a hoof. Without even looking in that direction, let alone thinking, Al grabbed it and pulled Remmy upward. The ram noticed the small mammal curled up against Al's sides peeking out.

"Oh, shouldn't be a surprise to meet you here!" Al yelled. He shook Remmy's hook enough to cause the prey mammal to wobble. "These deals, am I right? I'm _so_ hoping to work in one of these places sooner or later!"

Fatherhood had naturally brought out Al's gregarious side, Remmy thought, but it seemed like more of a surprise how marriage and a daughter had made the wolf more likely to throw his weight around as he walked. The ram shoved all that aside in his mind, and he cleared his throat. His eyes shifted down to the tiny, anxious-looking hybrid still clinging to Al's body.

"Hello to you too," Remmy said. He made a friendly wave.

The deer-x-wolf's eyes— the ram preferred 'dolf' in his mind, though he'd not asked Al about it yet, since 'weer' appeared more like an insult— met Remmy's, and the young girl nodded before rubbing her arms against her frilly, bright blue dress. Remmy shifted his own arm behind him. He felt his son stepping closer, and Remmy pulled the six-year-old against his knees.

"It's been a while since Vivian and your..." Al hesitated, a red flash of embarrassment slipping across his gruff face as he failed to remember. He awkwardly coughed. "Your Johnny." He grinned. As the alpha with a full pack to protect, naturally, he needed to recall all of these such things at a moment's notice. "Since, well, they've met each other."

"Hey, 'good, real friend'!" Johnny suddenly called out.

He leaned down and brushed a paw upon Vivian's shoulder. The little girl looked simply confused. The two fathers both scratched their chests, feeling unsure as well.

"Right, dad?" The wolf tapped one paw upon the tile and other on the little girl's back.

"Oh, yeah," Remmy recalled, kneeling.

"You want to be friends?" Vivian squeaked, a hopeful aura seemingly glowing out of her little body.

"You want to be friends too?" Johnny asked back. He grinned, his bushy eyebrows wiggling. "Great!"

"Damn," Al commented, abruptly clutching Remmy's side and tugging the ram's face up to the wolf's beaming expression, "isn't that something?"

"Yep," Remmy meekly responded. He didn't want to protest, but he still felt anxious and weird at how Al had pulled him into the air with just the grip of one arm.

"I wish that all of us," Al went on, chuckling a bit, "from you to me to Betty to Ozzy to Wolter to Velvet and everybody else, could've become friends as simply as that. You know?"

"It would've saved some, uh, time," Remmy muttered as Al gently put him down.

The ram turned his head a bit. He watched Johnny and Vivian flashing a bunch of goofy-looking silent gestures to each other, both of the young mammals laughing. Remmy sucked in a deep breath. He felt Al shifting about and preparing to walk out through the rest of the hallway.

"We'll see what happens, though," the ram whispered, having a reflective moment, "when they're twice this age... old enough to actually get _why_ everybody getting along is easier said than done."

**[End of Chapter Two]**

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks very much for reading!
> 
> This piece here is written as a part of the recurring 'Thematic Thursday' event, with this recent one being focused on cultural gatherings, family socials, major conventions, and things of that sort. It's meant to be a prequel to the series 'Pack Street: The Next Generation' that I've been working on. After finishing a single chapter of this piece, I felt the inspirational urge to do another one, and I feel like the writing works best as this kind of one-two-punch. Please check the broader series out if you enjoyed reading this one-shot, and please comment if you've got any concerns, worries, vents, or the like that you've got to say. As well, thanks once again for taking a look at this piece.


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